IT Governance, key and still alive

So many publications mentionning this topic. Does that mean that
- nobody understand anything?

- there are some unsolved problems in the concept and its application?

- it is now just a way for vendors (consultants, gurus, SOA solutions providers, scorecard specialists ) to market

- Organizations, in spite of the "official speech", are very very far from that?

One of the permanent criticism is that too much governance can kill agility, can kill innovation and adaptation.

It is sure that governance concepts and techniques are mainly "mechanistic", and sometimes far from systemic and "organic" adaptation.

Often too, within governance speeches, a "human" point of view is developed, but is it sincere or just "window dressing"?

Some rebounds on that:

- Is governance, agility incompatible? May be, not?

- SOX and management decommitment !!!

This can occur in some big companies, that are sometimes exceptional at the IT Governance point of view (IBM, ...), and now try to find the right balance between control and need of organic adaptation...

- the key Application Portofolio Management (APM) again and again

- as everybody knows, indicators are connected to Governance. BSC concept is not far, strategic mapping tools too...

Some example of comment on a good usage of bsc...
...a lot of education in business schools on BSC, in a lot of different disciplines
(financial control, governance, strategy, business plans, ...)
examples of students thinking on bsc...

CIO is just in the middle of all that.
- a lot of choices to do in the permanent pressure of demands...
- ...with end user power at last...
- Governance often means contracts. But contracts don't solve everything:
SLA (Service level agreements contracts) cannot replace cooperation in case of outsourcing

- How can CIO solve application challenges? Replace everything by an ERP ? Bridge everything with SOA and Web services? Good question.

- ...And CIO has to use already existing models like ITIL (and others, Cobit, CMMI, ISO xxx, ...)

Searching and Thinking...

I like this one:

MIT's Michael Schrage explains why getting highly relevant results from a search can actually inhibit the iterative process by which we discover and learn.
Idea we have about relevance of our search evolves while searching. Creativity can come from that iterative process too:
I search something, I am partially dissatisfied of the result, that makes me refocus on new idea about my search, I search again, ....

So: If you find what you search immediatly, you stop your brain ! Nice philosophical thought.

You can find there nice high level contributions about searching...
Just took this one too:
Jim McGee talks about the need for businesses to allow employees time to think, and the extent to which thinking can be done in the social public of blogs.

About fast thinking, I adore this fast (at the speed of the brain ), intelligent video from Michael Wesch (Kansas State University) about Web2 (but don't like the music, I stopped the sound...)

Some additionnal comment on it....

Technologies hot news...

What's next after still well living silicium ( yes , 45 nanometers...) to go-on on Moore's law?

Photonic computer is one of the opportunities.

Telephone still moving:

Ultramobile is the keyword. McKinsey (just register!) shows an interesting study about value of mobile phones...

Man/machine interface nice evolutions:

- Flexible plastics, flexible screens, even flexible RFIDs. Why not become invisible, with flexible screen as clothing and a camera behind you, reprojecting background image on the screen ....

- Night vision with new LEDs

and... are you lost in translation?

Mais attention: les technologies portent toujours leurs facteurs de risques !